China's top prosecution office has urged police to stop using illegal methods such as torture to force suspects to confess, following a series of high-profile miscarriages of justice, state media said yesterday.
Qiu Xueqiang, deputy director of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said the use of torture, threats, delusion and lies to collect evidence or extract confessions must be stopped. Only evidence obtained legally can be used, Qiu said at a national meeting of prosecutors on Thursday.
Although torture is outlawed in China, human rights groups say it is frequently used in police investigations. In a recent high-profile case, a Chinese man who served 11 years in prison for the murder of his wife was officially declared innocent last month after the victim reappeared. She had run away. The man said police beat a confession out of him.
The case caused a national uproar over miscarriages of justice in China's judicial system, long bemoaned for a lack of due process, an absence of the presumption of innocence and the use of torture to extract confessions.
Guangdong's police bureau warned heads of police departments in the province they will be held accountable if mistreatment of prisoners results in death.
A recent bureau document warned police will be punished if they respond too slowly to emergencies or neglect handling long-term problems in their jurisdiction, such as drugs, prostitution or gambling. Failure to handle crimes reported, leading to public protests, will also be punished. Officers will be held responsible for prisoners beating other inmates, and for misuse of police weapons, the report said.
In the latest case, seven policemen in Tangshan city, were convicted on Thursday of torturing a suspect forced to confess to the beating of a couple in 2002. Two of the convicted were the director and deputy director of a Tangshan police substation. They were sentenced to two years in prison. They tortured their victim with electric shocks, slapped him and forced him to drink pepper water.
The man was only vindicated after a higher court overturned an earlier conviction on insufficient evidence and another man later confessed to the crime. He plans to sue all departments responsible and seek compensation.
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